Do you want to improve your social media marketing? Are you curious about what works for large companies? The best way to add techniques to your repertoire is to look at what brands with high levels of engagement are doing.

Visual content is more popular than ever with social media users, but with many marketers now realizing this, the visual noise seems to be increasing. Every day, consumers log into their various social media accounts and are bombarded by images.

Conceptual Art, or “Conceptualism” is an art form in which the concept or idea behind the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and materials. As

Denis Marsili's insight:

"“In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory (with minimum effort) affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art”. Sol Lewitt

...The power of storytelling is something so many businesses fail to realise in marketing their brand and products. When information is communicated in story form, studies show people better relate and remember it. Stories have the ability to spark emotions, whether it’s happiness, empathy, trust or anger. When listening to them not only are the language-processing parts of our brain activated, experiential parts of our brain come alive too. Stories about food activate our sensory cortex, motion stories activate the motor cortex – fundamentally our brains are more engaged when listening to stories.Brand storytelling isn’t new; companies have used advertising to evoke emotions through storytelling for years. However the landscape has changed, the digital revolution spurred new platforms, channels and devices through which to share and tell stories, opening up greater opportunities, but simultaneously greater challenges.How do you cut through the noise, get your stories heard and resonate with the consumer? Here are my top tips for the art of storytelling in business...

The next big thing in content marketing technology, the content marketing stack, will develop significantly in 2015. Content stacks are necessary to consolidate the eight content marketing use cases identified in research we published on the content software landscape. No use case is an island. As organizations mature and become more strategic in their content marketing initiatives, it becomes imperative to seamlessly link execution to analytics, or optimization, or targeting, for example. We'll soon see end-to-end offerings from the big enterprise players: Adobe, Oracle, and Salesforce.com. All are scrambling to integrate multiple content point solutions into seamless "stacks," similar to the ad stack. In fact, content stacks will talk to the ad stacks, helping to integrate paid, owned and earned media. A couple years out, these two stacks will comprise what we refer to today as the marketing cloud.

This article is written by a research analysis who explores the future of content marketing in 2015. She suggests employees be educated to participate in the 'content ecosystem' as it provides a more useful and meaningful content creation. She predicts large companies will empower employees to 'create, ideate and leverage content'. Personalisation will drive the future of content marketing.

In case you missed the 2015 Marketing Predictions Pop Culture Style, here's the link. It includes insight from some of the finest minds in the world. Today however, I want to share something different re: 2015 and that are some tips re: e-commerce.

Have you ever heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? It’s a useful concept for sales and marketing to create better connections and relationships with prospects and clients. Abraham Maslow wrote a paper in 1943, “A Theory of Human Motivation” and subsequent book, Motivation and Personality, where he summarized the 5 needs most people search for. The more basic needs are represented at the bottom of the pyramid.

Contently has applied this concept to content marketing which you can read below. It’s a more strategic approach to creating your content to better connect with readers. I think for each layer, we can add other elements depending on your target market. How are you or will you incorporate Maslow’s Hierarch of Needs into your content?

Steal From These Top 10 Art Museum WebsitesFoundObjects.com, now RIP sadly, sold cool gifts to museum stores. Even after leaving the specialty gift business for the B2B web dev agency biz I still use several of the sources I found back then including art museum websites.

This post highlights ten of the best art museum website designs. I agree with most of them especially the Walker in Minneapolis. They rock. When in doubt visit an art museum website such as these ten and #STEALTHIS.

SPONSORED CONTENT: Explore the evolving science of content marketing: the consumer’s needs, the tools employed, and the latest learnings from the best brands in the business--with an eye toward the future of brand content marketing.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.